The House of Representatives on Thursday mandated its Committee on Public Accounts and its Finance counterpart to investigate Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) expenditure on Information Technology (IT).
This was sequel to a unanimous adoption of a motion by Rep. Iboro Ekanem (PDP-Cross River) at plenary.
Moving the motion earlier, Ekanem said that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) reported that MDAs spent about two billion dollars on IT projects annually.
He said that the huge expenditure was without commensurate results in the activities of MDAs.
The lawmaker said that it had also been reported that the demand for public funds to pursue IT projects had become a means to siphon public funds by corrupt individuals.
He said that a recent investigation carried out by NITDA showed that many IT projects were riddled with poor conceptualization and without clear sustainability plans.
He said that such situation of led to duplication of projects, waste, redundancies and a conduit pipe to siphon public funds.
Ekanem alleged that the nation’s financial resources were being hoarded to the benefit of a few individuals, thereby damaging the economy and reputation of the country.
According to him, if no attention is given to this matter, it may pave way for corrupt practices to increase among MDAs, using lCT platform as a ground for official theft, breach of trust and misappropriations.
In his remarks, the Speaker of the house, Mr Yakubu Dogara, mandated the committees to report back within four weeks for further legislative action.
